Horror movies these days fucking suck.

[Mortis]

I'm sorry, but I'm old fashioned, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween were all great movies.

Crappy movies include The Ring, Hostel, and just about all horror movies since 1995. Sorry, but the problem now a days isn't that 'there's too much gore' but rather in most cases that they try too hard to make a wonderful plot. I'm sorry, but The Grudge, The Ring, Darkness Falls, all of that were absolute garbage. "OMG THE GIRL CAN COME OUT OF THE TV."

Friday the 13th by todays standards may be garbage, but I still <3 me some of that more so than the crap they have in the movies now days. As for Hostel, it was pure gore, and it was made by Europeans, and I've never seen a truly good european movie, so from that impression I don't think I ever will, as they got the formula all wrong.

It's okay to have a cheesy plot, it's better than 'makes no sense' killings from a girl inside a TV.

[ROC]

As for Hostel, it was pure gore, and it was made by Europeans, and I've never seen a truly good european movie, so from that impression I don't think I ever will, as they got the formula all wrong.

[Guest Bluesman]

This is absolutely laughable. Who the fuck are you to tell me what a horror film is, especially when you just got done listing sci-fi flicks as 'this what a real horror film is'? Your original post laid out a horror film as "Horror movies are supposed to scare you", when I say films didn't scare me your reply is "that's irrelavent". The reaction a movie garners from the viewer has no bearing on what exactly that movie is? Do you realize how incredibly stupid that is? How that entirely comprimises your "horror movies scare you" argument? By saying "the reaction you get from the film is irrelavent" you have just shit all over your core argument of "a horror film scares you". If the reaction to the film doesn't matter, then a horror film's defintion can't be based on the reaction it garners from the viewer, can it?

Thanks for playing.

Good job of ignoring my point. If the film's intention is to scare you, it's a horror movie. Just like if a film's intention is to make you laugh, it's a comedy. Genre isn't defined by audience response, it's defined by the codes and conventions of the text. I didn't laugh at American Pie. Does that mean it's not a comedy? By your logic, apparently so.

And it is possible for a film to fall into two genres. Some of the films I listed may have been sci-fi films, but they're also horror films.

[Toe]

Friday The 13th Part Two is the best of the series. Why?

Because the girl getting chased has the brains to do what no other victim does....kick Jason in the friggin' testicles and run like hell!

[Godfatha]

I'm going to agree with Bluesman here.

If the end product is irrelevant, then so is anything leading up to the end product. In this case, if the reaction that is ellicited is irrelevant, than the intent (to get said reaction) is also irrelevant.

That said, I prefer any horror movies with a psychological twist to it. Movies that fuck with your head. The Exorcist scared the fuck out of me, not because of the demons, but because of the quick little flashes of this horrific demon that would appear at key points in the film. It's there quick enough to know that you saw something but you're not quite sure what it was. It's things like that that creep me out.

[GhostMachine]

You know what the big difference between horror movies and slasher movies is, in my opinion?

You can have a good horror movie with no gore in it, but a good horror movie has to have a decent plot.

A good slasher movie HAS to have gore in it, but the plot really doesn't matter.

The Friday the 13th movies are mostly crap. The first two are pretty good, but after that it all went downhill. Besides, its always the same formula, anyway.

The Nightmare On Elm Street movies I think they were well written and helped by the fact that Robert Englund is a damn fine actor.

As for the Halloween movies.....meh. Pure slasher flicks. There's no reasonable explanation about Michael keeps coming back for most of the series, and they should have ended when Donald Pleasence died in real life. The movies just haven't been the same without him. (And the less said about that piece of crap Halloween 3: Season of the Witch that had nothing to do with the rest of the series, the better)

As for horror movie recommendations, if you want to see some damn fine horror flicks, you can't go wrong with just about anything with Vincent Price in it. If you keep in mind that most of his movies were campy (The two Dr. Phibes movies) or played tongue in cheek (House on Haunted Hill), that is.

I highly recommend the Mad Magician if you haven't seen it. The Last Man On Earth is also good (it was remade, more or less, as the Omega Man starring Charlton Heston, and both are based on the book I Am Legion).

There's also a Hammer film that's quite good. I can't remember the name of it, but it ha dMichael Gough (Alfred from the Burton and Shitmacher Batman movies) as the bad guy. Murders of the Black Museum, or something like that, I think its called.

[BlackFlagg]

(And the less said about that piece of crap Halloween 3: Season of the Witch that had nothing to do with the rest of the series, the better)

[ravenjuice]

(And the less said about that piece of crap Halloween 3: Season of the Witch that had nothing to do with the rest of the series, the better)

Carpenter wanted the Halloween series to be a bunch of different stories, but the popularity of Myers made the studio change that and center it all around him.

Edited May 25, 2006 by ravenjuice

[Bushmeister]

I would like to step up to the plate and say that movies like the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, Saw 1 & 2 and Hostel are not horror or slasher flicks. They are, in fact, gore movies, and thus a whole separate genre from The Shinings and Friday the 13th's.

Horror movies, as someone said, usually demand and utilize a decent plot to create situations where the viewer is scared: not too much gore, but more tenser, atmosphere-related horror. Slasher flicks take some of the plot away and add in more gore, usually in the form of bloody and cut-off limbs. Shocking, but in the end pretty clean. Also, some atmosphere-related horror as well, the whole "BOOO!"-factor of the killer suddenly springing up on the unsuspecting victim.

Gore films, however, don't go for the atmosphere or the hidden killer lurking in the shadows. What they are about is pure, unedited, 100% straight-in-your-face visceral guts-n-gore, taking things to the ultimate limits. Compared to a proper gore movie, most slasher flicks are fucking tame in comparison. People getting cannibalized, tortured, shredded into pieces, gruesomely mutilated on-screen are what makes a movie a gore movie. No "a silhouette of the killer and blood spattering on the wall" effects (I fucking hate that thing, especially if a movie is advertised as being violent. No amount of red food colouring thrown against a window should earn a movie the R rating). In gore movies, the killer is shown straight on the screen from the beginning, and there is no attempt at setting the story so that there's any other sort of scare except for the ridiculous amounts of violence. I'd name Eli Roth as a modern-day gore movie artist, and at the same time there are people like Takashi Miike who employ gore movie-type imagery in their movies. What surprises me the most is that there has been a shift from the slasher flick towards gore movie elements in mainstream movies. Gore has been THE minority genre in movies (finally securing the spot from "gay cowboys eating pudding"-indie movies once Brokeback Mountain broke out) since it's spawning in the late 60's. It's a very limited genre, yes, but it has never really been a part of the mainstream horror genre. Thus, when applied in movies like Hostel, the pretty old-school schemes of gore movies seen fresh as fuck.

Yar, just my couple of cents there.

[Rashid]

As someone mentioned earlier, cheesy plots dont matter, a lot of great horror movies had cheesy plots and some not so great movies that I still love anyway. Jack Frost was pure cheese and fucking funny as well. A movie I really enjoyed. Leprachaun was cheesy, hell so was Child's Play.

Friday The 13th is a series I truly loved despite all it's hate by the general public. The movies have a very cult based following.

And I'd have to say I agree with Bushmeister's comment. The genre is horror movies is too wide, and "gore horror" is it's own genre. Here's how I'd break down horror:

*Psycological Horror: The movies that have the deep plots and involve thinking, and dont rely on blood and guts to scare people. These movies are not as common today. Examples: Poltergeist, Exorcist.

*Slasher Horror: FridayThe13th, NightmareOnElmStreet, Halloween, etc.., these movies have a murdered and he kills people. These usually have the weakest plots and a lot of violence. These movies were most popular in the 80's. Example: See No Evil

*Gore Horror: These movies dont usually have great plots while some do. They've become very popular in just the last couple years, and rely on pure blood and gore to scare people. Examples: Hostel

[TGC]

to the person who said that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre had bad acting and low production values, like many horror films that revolutionized the genre in the 70's it was made on a shoe string budget. It wasn't a big studio film, but an independent film that Tobe Hooper, I think, spent his own money on and got whatever financial backing he needed from private investors. As did Wes Craven and Sam Raimi during this time period, to name but two more.